Tony Albert
BiographyTony Albert was born in 1981 in Far North Queensland, Australia. He has exhibited his colourful and provocative paintings, drawings, wall installations and photographs at museums across the globe. In 2011, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel, showcased his large installation A Collected History (2002 - 2010) as part of the Roundabout touring exhibition.
In 2010, City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand premiered his major collaborative piece Pay Attention Mother Fuckers (2009 - 2010) which the National Gallery of Australia will also exhibit as part of the 2012 National Indigenous Art Triennial.
Albert holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane and his works are held in permanent collections throughout Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In 2012 Albert is an artist in residence at Artspace, Sydney.
For more information, visit Tony Albert's website here.
Artist Statement
Within his artistic practice, Tony Albert interrogates the human condition. Mining imagery and source material from across the globe and drawing upon personal and collective histories, Albert questions how we understand and imagine difference. Weaving together text appropriated from popular music, film, fiction and art history, along with clichéd images of extraterrestrials, photographs of his family in Lucha Libre wrestling masks, and an immense collection of 'Aboriginalia' (a term Albert coined to describe objects such as ash trays, drink coasters, velvet paintings, tea-towels and playing cards which include naïve images of Australian Aboriginal people and their culture), Albert presents a tapestry of ideas. Playing both good cop and bad cop, Albert engages in sophisticated negotiations with his viewers, coupling his often confrontational and unapologetic stance with punching humour, and hope.
